Free Dirty Daddy: The Chronicles of a Family Man Turned Filthy Comedian by Bob Saget

had come out during silent film days— mit out sound, a term coined by a 1920s German-émigré director. If only I’d been born German and silent. With the personality I have, if I was born in Germany in the twenties, I would have been silenced for sure.
    I never got to see heroes like Chaplin in the flesh, but amazingly when I was fourteen, Larry Fine of the Three Stooges spoke at my middle school, Mulholland Junior High. This was during the time my family was living in L.A., having moved from Norfolk for my dad’s job as head of meat. I was only at that school for six months, but the Larry experience stuck with me my whole life. He was already quite old at that point and not in great health, but I was starstruck.
    I adored the Three Stooges and was so enamored with Larry that I asked him after the assembly if I could visit him at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital, in Woodland Hills, where he lived—supported thankfully by the Screen Actors Guild. He said, “Sure,” although it was hard to understand him as he’d had a pretty bad stroke a couple years earlier. I think his actual response was more like “Schlllhompmpmphhh.”
    I was dying to talk to him more, hear all about his life, and pump him for more great Stooges stories. Not pump him sexually; I’m sure some of your minds went to that place. Remember, I was only fourteen and puberty didn’t come for me until I’d gotten my learner’s permit. Anyway, long story short—you’re welcome—my mother, Dolly, drove me to visit Larry at the Motion Picture residence. He was very happy to have a guest.
    The first time I went, he told me how tough his life was inside the nursing home. He never got to see any of the old shorts he’d made with Moe and Curly—and Shemp and Curly Joe—because the place didn’t have UHF. There was no cable, and back then they only ran Three Stooges shorts on UHF channels.
    Until I wrote these words, I hadn’t even thought of the acronym UHF for decades. It’s crazy; this writing and reminiscing is the only thing that makes me feel older. That, and my knees and my back and fupa, which fluctuates in size weekly.
    In that first visit with Larry, he also told me about how much he’d gotten hurt in the Stooges films. How Moe Howard would have them do their own stunts and they’d fall and break ribs. And how sometimes when Moe would rip out pieces of Larry’s hair in a slapstick fashion on camera, real hair would come out with it. Hair extensions are not always a friend of comedy.
    I’ll never forget that before we said good-bye that day, I went with Larry to go pick up his new set of false teeth at the front desk. With his good leg he kicked himself straight backward in his wheelchair—he couldn’t wheel himself forward because one side of his body was inactive, so he’d have spun around in circles if he’d tried. When we finally got to the reception desk, he picked up the envelope from the receptionist, ripped it open without missing a beat, and popped his new set of falsies right into his mouth.
    I’m glad he didn’t wash them off first. I didn’t want our visit interrupted by any kind of hygiene. It felt exactly like a Three Stooges moment. Bittersweet. Funny and sad. They often go hand in hand, especially with comedy people from a different era.

    My next visit to Larry, I brought along the silent eight-millimeter Stooges shorts from Blackhawk Films that I’d bought with money I’d made as a retail clerk. At that time I was working in a store in Reseda, a job my dad had teed up for me, and actually it was in that same store that I had my own Three Stooges–like moment . . .
    I was pricing Corelle dinner plates late one night when some armed men burst in, ran through to the sporting goods section to steal shotguns and bullets—yes, they sold those in a Target-like store in L.A. back then—and proceeded to fire off rounds as they grabbed cash and hauled ass through the aisles to make a